After the third [San Miguel], I am likely to announce that all writing is fantasy anyway: that to set any event down in print is immediately to begin to lie about it, thank goodness; and that it's no less absurd and presumptuous to try on the skin of a bank teller than that of a Bigfoot or a dragon.

— Peter S. Beagle

And at last she woke up in the middle of one warm night and said, "Yes, but now.

— Peter S. Beagle

...and it's not my place to chase around after you, fixing stuff. What I knows what I know, and it don't include putting the world back the way it out to be. It's too late for that. Way too late for heroes, champions, miracles. Don't matter what our heritage was maybe meant for - your side got hold of it first, and you won long ago. No undoing that, Esau, I ain't fool enough to think otherwise. I'm still sorry for you, but I know your side's won, this side of the grave.

— Peter S. Beagle

- and you are truly human now. You can love, and fear, and forbid things to be what they are, and overact.

— Peter S. Beagle

Any woman can weep without tears," she answered over her shoulder, "and most can heal with their hands. It depends on the wound. She is a woman, Your Highness, and that's riddle enough

— Peter S. Beagle

Because that world's gone. The world where people walked around whistling that music. All the madrigal singers in the world can't make that other one real again. It's like dinosaurs. We can put them back together perfectly, bone for bone, but we don't know what they smelled like, what kind of sounds they made, or how big they really looked standing in the grass under all those fossil fern trees. Even the sunlight must have been different, and the wind. What can bones tell you about a kind of wind that doesn't blow anymore?

— Peter S. Beagle

But some, a very come to the gods all on their own They find their way—long and far it is, sometimes—and they wander up to the altars, shy and clumsy and embarrassed and alone, and when they can get the words out, they say, 'Well. Here I am

— Peter S. Beagle

But what's left on earth that I haven't tried?" Prince LIR demanded. "I have swum four rivers, each in full flood and none less than a mile wide. I have climbed seven mountains never before climbed, slept three nights in the Marsh of the Hanged Men, and walked alive out of that forest where the flowers burn your eyes and the nightingales sing poison. I have ended my betrothal to the princess I had agreed to marry — and if you don't think that was a heroic deed, you don't know her mother. Furthermore, I have vanquished exactly fifteen black knights waiting by fifteen fords in their black pavilions, challenging all who come to cross. And I've long since lost count of the witches in the thorny woods, the giants, the demons disguised as damsels; the glass hills, fatal riddles, and terrible tasks; the magic apples, rings, lamps, potions, swords, cloaks, boots, neckties, and nightcaps. Not to mention the winged horses, the basilisks and sea serpents, and all the rest of the livestock." He raised his head, and the dark blue eyes were confused and sad." And all for nothing," he said. "I cannot touch her, whatever I do. For her sake, I have become a hero — I, sleepy LIR, my father's sport and shame — but I might as well have remained the dull fool I was. My great deeds mean nothing to her.

— Peter S. Beagle

Envy nobody. It is the true secret of happiness, or at least the only one I know. (By Moonlight)

— Peter S. Beagle

Farrell had seen pure white drunkenness before, but not often enough to recognize it at sight. He knew the thing itself, however--the freight train rattling and lurching comically from hilarity to slobbering sorrow, picking up speed as it passed through wild, aimless anger straight on into wild sickness; and then, running smoothly and almost silently now, into a dark place of shaking and sweating and crying, and out again with no warning to where a dazzling snowy light made everything very still.

— Peter S. Beagle